Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
UNIVERSITY TODAY
New Delhi; Vol XXVI, No 1 1 JANUARY 2006 SPECIAL ANNUAL NUMBER
Historical perspective
The purpose of this paper is to prepare the future roadmap of distance education
in the university of Delhi. Ever since the establishment of SCC in the university, the
distance education sector has been making a steady progress both in terms of enrollment
and in innovating pedagogical skills. In fact, today, the DE sector has overtaken the
conventional sector. What is even more significant is that the students of the formal
stream are coming to rely more and more on the DE study material for their studies.
During the 1990's, the University of Delhi (DU) had set up a number of
committees to address the issues relating to the provision and future development of
distance education. These included the Joshi, Dass, Pant, Khurana and Maurya
Committees (1990-1996). Even though, the various committees differed slightly in their
perception about the final shape of the new format, they were unanimous in their
recommendation that the DE be brought to the mainstream education in the university.
(i) The School will become a Campus of the University of Delhi, to be called the Campus of
Open Learning.
(ii) The Campus will be headed by a Director (on the pattern of the Director, South Campus).
Three associate Directors (of the rank of professors), who will be appointed by open
selection, will assist the director.
(iii) The Campus will have Faculties, Departments and other institutions. To begin with a
Faculty of Open Learning with a Department of Distance and Continuing Education
(herein after referred as 'DECC') in it will be created.
(iv) The teachers of the School will become teachers in the Department of Distance
Education. All future appointments of Professors, Readers and Lecturers in the
Department will be by the University (under Statute 19(1)).
Page 2 of 12
(v) The conversion of the teachers of School to teachers of Department can be done in the
same way as it was done for the Central Institute of Education in 1978.
(vi) The Campus will have a (i) Joint Registrar (ii) Joint Finance Officer and (iii) a Joint
Controller of Examinations all appointed by open selection.
(vii) There will be Regional Centers of the Campus in different parts of the city of Delhi, each
serving about 20,000 students. Each center will have a Deputy Director, who will be
appointed on the basis of seniority, from among the Readers.
(viii) The status of the existing administrative staff would be protected when the School
becomes the Campus of Open Learning.
(ix) The Campus will set up, or have access to, a modern infrastructure for production of
audio visual materials, for computerized operations and facilities of modern information
technology in addition to well equipped conventional libraries.
Prof. Deepak Nayyar, who succeeded Prof. Mehta as the new VC in the year
2000 appointed a committee to fine tune the new structure consisting of two experts in
the field of distance education from the Commonwealth of Learning, namely, Prof. Geoff
Peters and Prof. Patrick Guiton, who submitted their report in March-April, 2002. The
terms of reference of Peter and Patrick committee was to examine the possibilities in the
provision of open learning possibilities in the university. In the meantime, the VC
appointed an officer on special duty in the DDCE on 23.04.2001 to facilitate the
conversion of the school into COL. On the expiry of his term the VC appointed director,
COL in the year 2002 and an OSD of the school of correspondence courses in 2003, to
carry the task forward.
.
It has been amply demonstrated that technology makes it possible to deliver (and
relatively cheap) higher education across the university. The campus of open learning, as
a radical re-conceptualization of higher education is not to be perceived in isolation,
simply as an add-on to the existing set-up in the university. As a virtual campus it has to
be understood as part of the re-engineering of the entire university. It will help create the
necessary frame-work for real consensus building around a new set of assumptions
that recognizes the impact of new education technology, which impels us to re-think
how we teach and learn, irrespective of the stream one enrolls in.
In spite of all the media hype and the constant refrain to convert the School into
the Campus of Open Learning, a metaphorical conversion (the Campus of Open Learning
is not an institution), which entails a paradigm shift to make distance education integral
to the university system as an all-embracing phenomenon, it remains a non-starter. The
Campus is to provide an open platform for shared academic activities, integrating all the
departments and colleges into a faculty network. The COL is structured to involve the
seven thousand strong teaching faculty in the university as a networked collectivity as a
‘resource-pool’, embedded in the virtual campus. The rationale for the conversion of SCC
into COL is precisely to entrust the task of teaching two lac distance education students to
this collectivity, to operate in a devolved way through the study centers in the colleges
(like the Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board, for example). Since the task had
become too unwieldy to be handled by a college level, stand-alone institution like SCC, it
had, therefore, to be wound up, paving the way for its metamorphosis into COL.
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
(created by an act of parliament)
1 2 3
North Campus South Campus OpenCampus
Provides infrastructure Provides infrastructure To Provides infrastructure
For class room Teaching For class room Teaching for Virtual class room
Mode Mode teaching Mode:
e-learning platform
Faculty Pool
integrating all the
depatments and college
into a faculty network
Open Learning
Development Centre
It should be born in mind, that Faculties and Departments are not the exclusive
preserves of any campus, and are not mode specific (as misconstrued in the ordinance
pertaining to SOL), for the university is not segmented into campuses. However, they
organise their academic programmes in the academic space called the campus, which can
be mode specific. The North Campus and the South Campus belong to the formal stream
Page 5 of 12
(class-room teaching mode) and provide infrastructural support for the purpose. Now that
the third Campus has been created (called the Open Campus), as the virtual Campus, to
organise teaching through distance mode. The Open Campus is expected to build the
distance education facility (e-learning platform) by providing the requisite technical
paraphernalia and also garner the requisite faculty support, both from within the
university and, if need be, outside.
It envisages a network of regional centers , an enhanced computer based
infrastructure and audio-visual and library services. Networks and connectivity are
critical to the development of successful infrastructure with a focus on curriculum
delivery, learner assessment and personalized feedback. It can include text, video, audio,
animation and virtual environments organized as self paced, hands-on learning. With the
new initiative, the university will develop a culture of innovation in its overall conceptual
design and organization by utilizing a varied pedagogical and instructional approaches
including distance learning. With the broad band intranet in place, the university can now
proceed to operationalise the open campus through integrated and experimental use of
technologies as resourses to students, catalysts for learning to provide increased access
and enriched quality education.
At present, thirteen departments offer undergraduate level programs, and five
departments offer their courses at the postgraduate level, both in the formal class-room
teaching mode and through the distance mode. Hopefully, in future all departments would
also be encouraged to go online. It should be appreciated that COL, unlike the North and
the South campus is not a mutually exclusive academic space, but is designed to offer its
programmes across the entire university. It will foster new methods of teaching and
learning which are more flexible that will allow students, both in the formal and the non-
formal stream, more freedom to choose an appropriate mixed mode of study based on
their needs and fancies.
It must be emphasized that distance education has its own distinctive pedagogy,
and its own philosophy. The Department is expected to offer academic programs leading
to Certificates, Diplomas and Degrees in distance education pedagogy exactly in the
same manner as the department of education offers courses in formal education
pedagogy. It is also designed to develop expertise to help produce courses for delivery
through the distance education mode, and also to actively involve in research, training
and extension education activities. It should be borne in mind that the Department of
Distance Education is not an exclusive preserve of the Campus of Open Learning (as per
the new ordinance), and is well within its rights to float its courses in the formal steam
also (like the Department of Education). Similarly, all other Departments in the university
(many have already done so) are expected to offer their courses online, in the Campus of
Open Learning. The DDCE, like any other department in the university is positioned in a
faculty, called the faculty of open learning. The department may also be motivated to
innovate, design curricula, develop teaching methodologies and system of evaluation for
the courses offered in the open campus.
Page 6 of 12
Over the years, distance learning has evolved from correspondence courses to
video and satellite broadcasting models of remote learning. The Open Campus will create
an e-learning platform for the university to go online. The campus will have a specific
distance learning focus. It will host the necessary e-learning infrastructure and create
academic learning space for the university to capitalise on this huge opportunity for
distance education. But it will not be a closed environment. The idea is to pick the best
teachers in the university and make them available to a wide spectrum of students and not
just those in physical proximity. The Open Campus, as a collaborative scheme, will
promote partnerships at all levels, integrating all the departments and the colleges into a
network which would ensure participation of all the willing players in the new venture.
Any department (belonging to science, humanities or social sciences) either on its own or
in collaboration with other departments would have the facility to offer courses, both at
the undergraduate and post-graduate level, in the open campus (like the South Campus).
The COL, by drawing the best talents in the university, will innovate and design
curricula, develop teaching methodologies and systems of evaluation for the students of
the open campus as a special target group. The courses, new methods and modes of
delivery so developed will be extended across the university, including the formal stream.
The campus can, thus, provide an open platform for shared academic activities in the
domain of course design, instruction and evaluation. The university, with the convergence
of the formal and the non-formal system of education will become a full-fledged dual-
mode and mixed-mode institution. These resources would focus primarily on the
material to be prepared for the university’s intranet and printed books.
which is a college level institution. With the function of academic resource generation
shifting to OLDC, and the student support system decentralized as study centres spread
all over the city in various colleges, SOL can, at best, operate as an administrative unit
(e.g. enrollment of students and office level services) like the Non Collegiate Women
Education Board.
There are serious flaws in the ordinance pertaining to SOL. In their zeal to thwart
the recommendation of the Rao committee to transfer the teaching faculty to DDCE, the
university has found a very bizarre solution: all the teachers of SOL have been admitted
to the DDCE as recognized members (Ord.XX(8)), in gross violation of the statutes of the
university. The existing faculty already enjoys such a privilege: all teachers are members
of their respective departments as they have been selected by their duly constituted
selection committees for the purpose, and accorded recognition by the EC. The faculty in
the school teach a multiplicity of courses and subject option belonging to their respective
departments, which would not be feasible if they are shifted to DDCE. And no teacher
can be member of more than one department simultaneously, and by extending
membership to them of the DDCE, an anomalous situation of identity has been created,
which is totally untenable. Similarly, the Governing Body (GB) has been reconstituted to
provide for the provision that Director, COL would be its chairperson. In the university
hierarchy, the director, as team member, sits on judgment on the decisions taken by the
GB of a college under his jurisdiction. As such he can not assume a position subordinate
to his position. The director, south campus has twenty odd colleges under his charge, but
nobody has ever heard he becoming chairperson of GB at the same time.
Course Options
The students of the School are discriminated against with respect to the range of courses and
subject options. The School offers only BA (P), B.Com (P) and three Honours courses at the
undergraduate level, namely, English (H), Political Science (H) and B.Com (H) for a student
population of more than one lakh. The subject options in BA (P), which accounts for the bulk of
enrollment, is limited only to half-a-dozen or so of outdated and outmoded courses, from a pool
of well over fifty programmes (traditional and job oriented) available in the formal stream (see
DU Information Bulletin). Ever since the School was started in 1962, not a single department in
the university (there are more than eighty) has cared to design and develop a new curriculum,
especially for the students of the School. Such is the deep-seated bias against the distance mode
that most of the departments have even refused to extend their routine courses, for example,
Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, just to name a few, to the students of the School. Twenty job
oriented courses are available in the formal stream, but only one in the School. No science
courses are offered. It is a pity that the IGNOU, which started much later in the field of distance
education, offers a wide spectrum of courses (more than seventy) in science, social science,
humanities and ICT, while Delhi University is quite content to be a laggard. A law must be
enacted to make it mandatory for all the departments to extend all their courses and subject
options, both at the under-graduate level and post-graduate level for the students of the non-
formal stream also.
Page 8 of 12
Faculty-support System
Distance education students, who are not required to come to the campus, need
access to academic advising services. Faculty members in all distance education
institutions, typically observe office hours, during which time they deal with questions
and concerns of individual students. The counselor is a vital figure in the institution of
distance learning to stimulate the foundation of self help groups: students often get stuck
because they come across a conceptual difficulty, for instance, and could not, without a
face-to-face tutorial, (should be done on-line in virtual mode) get themselves going again.
It is imperative to assign students to specific tutors, the general idea being that the student
will stay with the same counselor throughout the course.
As per the UGC norms, every teacher in the university is required to work for 40
hours a week of which 22 hours must be devoted to active teaching in the institution. A
college teacher takes 18 periods of 55 minutes duration each per week. In addition, he is
also required to give 3 contact hours per week to students for counseling. A teacher also
corrects, on an average, 100 tutorial assignments per week. Moreover, the teachers in the
colleges devote considerable time and energy to various extra-curricular activities.
The other student support system, namely, the student response sheet (SRS feed-
back mechanism), integral to method of instruction, which has virtually ceased to exist,
needs to be revived. The MC of the school had constituted a fact finding committee to go
into the malfunctioning of the institution which has observed: “a minimum of SRS per
week must be corrected by the teachers of the school and this must be considered as their
basic task while determining the staff strength.”
The primary objective of SCC renamed as SOL (ordinance XX(8)), “is to serve as
an institution of distance education and open learning” and “to organize teaching through
the distance mode” which requires sending the study material at regular intervals,
followed sequentially by counseling (PCP) and SRS to ensure participatory and
individualized mode of learning. As observed by Prof Amrik Singh, an eminent
educationist, “students are made to come together for a few days and given a series of
some lectures, a pale version of what is done in a class room. What must be understood
clearly is that distance mode is not the same thing as conventional class room teaching
mode, but it is the same thing accomplished through another mode. This is the whole
philosophy of distance education: it is designed to bring education to a student at home,
Page 9 of 12
rather than bring a student to education in an institution.” It should be born in mind that
IGNOU, which is a model institution of distance education in the country relies on
counseling for personal contact with the students. In the formal stream also, it is common
knowledge that personal contact with the students is established not in class room
teaching but in tutorials. Not surprisingly, the student participation rate in ‘PCP’ program
is not more than five per cent.
In its place has emerged a grotesque system of ‘coaching classes’ under the guise
of PCP. These ‘coaching classes’ are essentially organized on week-ends and is paid work
even for the school faculty as an extra source of remuneration, and it is not surprising
that, over the years, the component of these coaching classes, as a proportion, has been
steadily going up, at the cost of counseling and SRS which are central to distance mode.
The fact finding committee has taken a serious view of this development.” The
participation of teachers in PCP is highly skewed, a pointer to either mal-distribution or
grabbing by some teachers or lack of any monitoring system”. The fact finding
committee has taken strong exception to the system of overtime payment for PCP work to
both the teaching faculty and the non-teaching staff which amounts to several lakhs of
rupees, as over time payment, every year with the active connivance of the MC. The
school collects PCP fee from every student (even though the participation in PCP is
optional), over and above the tuition fee, which means that the PCP is not part of the
teaching module of the school. However, if it is considered critical to the success of
students (like the summer schools in British Open University) attendance should be
mandatory.
..
Continuing Education and Add-On Courses
Decentralisation
The School has on its rolls one-and-a-half lakh students, and they are squeezed
into a college structure which was designed to accommodate a maximum of only ten
Page 10 of 12
thousand students. A regional centre was opened in South Delhi at Moti Bagh, way back
in the 1970s, to cope with the situation. That was the beginning and end of the
decentralisation process, even though it has been a constant refrain. It is envisaged that
there will be Regional Centers of the Campus in different parts of the city of Delhi, each
serving about 20,000 students. The recent endevevour to introduce office automation is a
step in the right direction, but should be taken to its logical conclusion by extending all
the student support services on-line.
. The success of Britain’s Open University owes much to the network of regional
self-study centres. The Open Campus will have a chain of self-study centres spread all
over the city, with elaborate paraphernalia as learning support system: a decent library
(both printed and electronic study material), audio-visual teaching aids, computer
network and tutors. The self-study centres can be located in various colleges of the
university. The sharing of the infrastructure between the regular students of the college
and the students of the Open Campus can be worked out in an optimal manner to the
advantage of both. The campus can finance creation of the necessary infrastructure, both
hardware and software and networking requirements. The willing teaching faculty of the
college can be associated with the academic programs of the Campus as an adjunct
faculty: to develop new courses, participate in personal contact programs, organise
practical classes for science based courses and help the Campus students as tutors in the
self-study centres. The self-study centres will be integrated with the Open Campus by
computer network and will have the facility to download study material of choice,
fortified with self-help collaborative tutorial systems.
Post-Graduate Studies
. All the departments in the university conduct post-graduate teaching, either in the North
Campus, or in the South Campus, or in both. With the new dispensation, rationality
demands that the Departments offering PG courses through distance mode organise
their programmes in the newly created e-learning space, that is, the Campus of Open
Learning. The proposal to continue to use the School as a surrogate for the Campus of
Open Learning for post-graduate teaching (where the courses taught are university level
courses), is seriously flawed and, if continued, will render the third campus superfluous, a
self-defeating exercise.
. It is pertinent to note that the students in the formal stream have the privilege to be
taught by the Professor level faculty in the Departments, and thus, have an obvious
advantage over the students of the non-formal stream. The basic idea of restructuring was
precisely to assimilate these underprivileged students also in the mainstream, by shifting
all post-graduate teaching from the School to the concerned Departments in the new set-
up of the university, within the institutional framework of the Campus of Open Learning,
where it actually belongs. However, the distinguished teachers of the School can be
associated with post-graduate teaching in the departments as guest faculty, as part of
Page 11 of 12
cooperative teaching in the university. The School, like any other college, should
concentrate on under-graduate teaching.
Examination
The examination system in the university has lost all the credibility it once
enjoyed. The SCC has been forced to adopt the same format with disastrous
consequences. The students of the school have the dubious distinction of having the
highest failure rate. Another serious problems with the examination of the students of the
School is the inordinate delay in the evaluation of the scripts and declaration of the
results. Last year, the university introduced a system of ‘internal evaluation’ as part of the
examination reforms. However, the system has not been extended to the students of the
School, (ordinance VIII E). The students of the school need internal evaluation and
continuous monitoring more than the students in the regular stream. Moreover, the
students of the school are required to undertake written assignments (SRS) which are
marked by the tutors, and this activity which is a method of monitoring progress can also
be used as a method of assessment of performance as part of internal assessment scheme.
There is an urgent need to create the much needed e-learning platform which can make
the task much easier by making assessment by tutors on-line. The university has,
however, constituted a sub-committee to look into the issue of internal assessment for the
students of distance education whose report is awaited. Several computer based on-line
examination modes are available and more can be developed for the courses offered to
the students through the Open Campus.
Finance
Distance education is cost effective in various ways. Distance learning often
operates at more efficient teacher/student ratio. The SCC has a teaching faculty of about
eighty for a student population of one and half lakhs. Several studies have established
that the unit cost in distance education is distinctly lower than in the conventional mode.
On an average, the financial deficit per college is estimated to be of the order of five to
six crores of rupees per year. The total deficit for all the colleges in the university comes
to more than three hundred crores per year. In sharp contrast to this, the estimated deficit
for the SCC, which caters to more students than the combined strength of all the colleges
taken together, is no more than the average of only one college (i.e. six crores). It would
be of interest to know that the SCC has been meeting this deficit from its surplus account
for a number of years and as such has been self supporting financially. And yet there are
tremendous possibilities of further economising if the university views the
mismanagement of the institution with more concern (and takes the impending reform
more seriously), which has, of late assumed scandalous proportions. The institution has
all the promise, not only to be a self-supporting unit, but also generate surplus for the
more pampered formal sector.
. Conclusion
The boundaries between the formal and non-formal education sector are getting
fuzzy, and very soon, may disappear completely. Face to face classroom teaching is no
longer considered the most coveted option. The ubiquitous course material of the distance
Page 12 of 12
mode has caught the imagination of students in a big way and has popularized a parallel
education system: it flourishes in the form of self-help study material, both in print
media and CD based tutorial manuals, the television education channels and, of course,
the world wide web. The success story of the readymade class-notes prepared and
circulated by the seniors (as witnessed by the spread of xerox culture) has rendered face
to face teaching redundant for a whole lot of self motivated students. The open campus
has already established itself, albeit only obliquely. COL will enhance the quality of
teaching and learning by extending support to all the departments and colleges, as they
endeavor to meet the demands of the students with innovative courses and new modes of
delivery. Instead of coercing the students in to the classroom (e.g. minimum attendance to
be eligible to take an exam or awarding marks for attendance as part of internal
evaluation) let different modes of teaching and learning compete the way courses do,
leaving the final outcome to the evolutionary processes to be sorted out.
.
V P Jain (Retd) Department of
Economics,School of Open Learning,
University of Delhi.